Gunfire outside a central Harlem end-of-the-year bash yesterday added yet another homicide to the neighborhood’s alarming 2006 tally.
Ronald Corley, a 21-year-old stockroom worker, became the 29th recorded murder victim in the area since Jan. 1. A mob of about 20 people attacked him on West 119th Street, just outside an ongoing Police Athletic League celebration called “Ending the Year Right.”
“I get hit,” said a friend who had been with Corley. “They’re pounding on me. Ronald’s fighting. What people said was Ronald wouldn’t give up. Then I heard the gunshots.
“I see Ronald’s body on the floor,” the friend continued. “His eyes are open. He’s trying to breathe. I was telling him, ‘Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!’
“Then a tear ran down his eye, and he took his last breath.”
Witnesses said the gunman fired wildly into the air as he fled toward Frederick Douglass Boulevard.
Corley’s heartbroken dad, Ronald Sr., said: “I need closure. I need information.
“What’s bothering me is that nobody saw nothing? That really itches.”